Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida made a blog post on the Final Fantasy XIV official website. In it, he explains that the upcoming Endwalker expansion must be delayed, and goes on to explain why this had to be done.
Highly apologetic, Yoshida confirms that the upcoming expansion will be delayed by two weeks. Endwalker was originally planned to be released on November 23, 2021, but has now been pushed back to December 7, 2021, with early access starting on December 3, 2021. This also affected the first two patches following the release, with patch 6.01 scheduled for December 21, 2021, and patch 6.05 now scheduled for January 4, 2022. He then goes on to explain the reasoning for the delay.
He takes full responsibilty for the delay, saying that it was because of "my own selfishness as the game’s director." While production was nearly done for the expansion, he explained that as he was testing it, he realized that it could be further improved.
However, as we neared the end of development and I played through everything—from quests to battle content and the like—I just couldn’t contain my desire to further improve Endwalker’s quality, specifically because this expansion pack marks the first major culmination of events in FFXIV so far. Even as we look beyond Endwalker, the FFXIV story will continue for a long time and we hope to deliver many more enjoyable experiences in the game. However, it was precisely because Endwalker concludes the first major saga that I felt our team needed to push ourselves to the “limits” that I envisioned.
This means that he and the team were committed to making sure everything is perfect for Endwalker, ensuring that everyone will fully enjoy this expansion, which will be the culmination of Final Fantasy XIV's story up to this point. Unfortunately, this meant they had to delay the release, as they risked the update being unstable if they stuck to the original schedule. Yoshida reflects that up until this point, he has never postponed an announced release date in his career, and that this was a really hard decision for him to make, again asking fans for their forgiveness.
Endwalker will be Final Fantasy XIV's fourth expansion and will bring an end to the overarching story that the game has had since A Realm Reborn. It will add two new Jobs for players to use, the Sage and the Reaper. The trailers have also shown that they will take inspiration from Final Fantasy IV, as the moon is teased as a major setting, a new tribe will be added called the Loporrits, which look much like the Hummingway race, and Dragoon Estenien appears to play a more prominent role in the story.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker will now be released on December 7, 2021, and will be available on Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and PC.